Room closed amid mercury contamination fears set to reopen

It took four years, but a room on the second floor of Austin Community College's Rio Grande Campus closed due to mercury contamination is set to reopen in the spring. Room 211, located below a chemistry lab, does not pose a hazard, officials say. The room has been remodeled and cleaned and will be reopened as a the-ater scene shop. Two employees who worked in the vicinity filed suit against ACC in 2003 after complain-ing they suffered from mercury poisoning.

According to Cobby Cabuto, an attorney who represented ACC, the plaintiffs were unable to produce a response after test-ing was conducted. "They kept replying that they wanted more testing to be conducted," Cabuto said. "They only wanted that because the testing revealed that they couldn't find anything." The case was dismissed in May 2004.

Testing was conducted by two outside firms; Bolton Labo-ratories and the RETEC Group of Austin; and an environmen-tal toxicologist, Thomas M. Dydek. According to a report by Dr. Dydek in April 2004, mercury contamination levels were not high enough to constitute a public health risk.

The RETEC Group, an environmental management group, monitored the mercury vapor using the Minimum Risk Level (MRL) recommended for mercury vapor by the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry as the health protection guideline for ACC staff and students. The MRLs, used to identify potential health effects to the general public from sources of contaminants, were set below levels that might cause adverse health effects in even the most sensitive popu-lations, according to reports from the Texas Department of Health, Bolton Laboratories, and internal memos circulated among ACC administrators.

The wood floor in Room 221 was removed, which re-vealed more traces of mercury, and the labs were covered by materials such as plastic sheets and put under negative pressure to prevent air or other materials from escaping.

A chronological summary of the measurements for mer-cury vapor in the chemical labs by the RETEC Group revealed that though mercury vapor concentrations inside the con-tainment initially increased; as work progressed, they steadily decreased. None of the hallway mea-surements exceeded the MRL "When people hear the word 'mercury,' they get fright-ened," Cabuto said.

One of the employees com-plained that through personal testing with his experts, he had found high mercury levels in the dust in Room 221. Cabuto said that one is "usually affected by mercury through inhalation, not necessarily because it's in dust."

"For mercury vapors to become dangerous, they need to be part of an organic compound which can only be formed by an unusual biological reaction," he said. To ensure long-term safety, an annual schedule of indoor air quality testing at all campus-es has been implemented and has been ongoing for the past several years.